


Step Twice Into The Same River

by Smilla



Category: Supernatural
Genre: 2006, AU, Episode: Crossroad Blues, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-19
Updated: 2011-01-19
Packaged: 2017-10-14 21:42:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,275
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/153740
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Smilla/pseuds/Smilla
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>So we'll just set things straight, put things in their natural order. And you get ten extra years on top. That's a bonus.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Step Twice Into The Same River

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to: Desertport who says undeserved things like “I hate you” but then patiently catches all my mistakes. She is made of the awesome both as a beta and as a friend.
> 
> [Originally posted [here](http://smilla02.livejournal.com/56739.html).]

Suddenly he is back in his body and he still feels like there’s something very wrong, but this time Dad is alive and the time they spend holed up at Bobby’s is nice. After two months, Bobby chases Dad away with a shotgun again and Sam looks back apologetically while they drive away. When Dean’s body is ready enough, they start hunting: Chupacabra in Illinois, a curse in Iowa, pack of werewolves all the way up to Montana.

Dad’s truck is always framed by the Impala’s rear-view mirror and the only one who knows what was supposed to happen is Dean. It feels good and rightly so.

 

 _Duality_

Dad keeps his secrets close to his vest even when Sam lies on the bed as if the slightest movement will make his head explode. Dad stays silent even when the things Sam sees fill Sam with rage, helplessness and doubt. When Sam almost suffocates from the loss he thinks he’s brought onto his family, from the pain he believes he brought to Jess, Dad keeps his secrets and Dean almost forgets that he’s not supposed to know.

But mostly, he remembers the pain of what was supposed to happen, and after he’s told Sam lies he shouldn’t have, he repeats over and over again that it was worth it.

 

 _Synthesis_

This time it’s Dad who leaves. The scene plays like a bad reenactment: Sam and Dad in each other’s face. They say spiteful words that are almost the same said on a night so many years ago, in the countless fights before and in those that came after. Dean doesn’t side with either of them, but his body moves imperceptibly toward Sam and Dad sees it. Dad stops halfway to the door, and there’s the clang-clang of a train far in the distance. It leaves in its wake a suffocating silence.

Dad finally talks. He does it slowly, and he hurts himself as much as he hurts Sam. After, he leaves because he doesn’t know how to stay, but he’s never out of reach anymore.

 

 _Foundation_

He almost loses Sam to the Demon in an old cantina on the Mexican border. They get him back, Dad and him, but part of Sam takes refuge in a dark place inside and doesn’t come back. Who knows what the fuck the voices are telling him. Dean would give up everything he has left to make them stop talking, to draw Sam back outward. When eventually the words come, the soothing tone is the same one Dean used for the first time more than twenty-six years before.

Dean reels at the hidden hypocrisy of his actions, even when Sam smiles again fully and bright. It’s not deceit, he says to himself.

 

 _Grace_

Dean meets her during a hunt and she rolls her eyes at his lame jokes and kisses him hard in the dark of her room. When Sam tells her Dean’s embarrassing secrets, she laughs and looks at him tenderly. But her skin is soft when she makes love to him and her hips are large. After, she always says I’m not going to leave you.

He leaves her with a promise he’s not going to keep, says it softly on her red lips. He looks at her waving in the distance and he turns up the music until the rhythm and the low beats become words.

 

 _Creation_

They kill the Demon and it is Sunday, and the sun shines bright and glints off the blood on their faces. After, Sam kneels on the dirt, curls on himself and cries. Dad stoops beside him and whispers soft words. Dad says _I’m sorry_ and the son finds his father and the father finds his son. Dean stands tall and straight on their left and looks at the blue sky; he listens to the wind whispering through the branches.

Amid the destruction and the strong smell of cordite, inside the circle of fire, to the quiet, still air he says that it was worth it.

 

 _Understanding_

They split at mid-morning under an overcast sky and the promise of rain. Dad with no purpose and Sam having enough for both of them. Sam had spoken the words many years ago in a shitty motel room when the danger had been too close and Dean’s mind too clouded. There was truth in them and Sam – probably Dad too – had always lived with a foot out the door; hidden where Dean wouldn’t see it. He believes he’s learned how to let them go, but it doesn’t hurt less than before.

They make promises they intend to honor, Dad and Sam. Dean waves his good-byes and almost laughs at the irony of it. This time, he thinks, he is the one who is going to break them.

 

 _Invariance_

He hooks up with another hunter. Leaves him on the shoulder of the road with a bitter grin on his face and blood on his knuckles. He spends a month in a nameless town. Leaves when the leaves fall and doesn’t regret it even for a moment. He knows he’s moving in circles but he doesn’t have a place to go forward to, not knowing how to go back.

He goes to Sam, instead. The girl is nice enough and Dean doesn’t have any right to hate her so much. He is a coward, leaves Sam with a smile thinking it’s going to be enough.

 

 _Finality_

When he finally finds Dad, Dean talks first, but Dad’s always been unreasonable so he cold-cocks him with the butt of his pistol and apologizes while he soothes the lump on the back of his head. He shakes his head at the idea that he’s actually hit his father and drags him into his car. He drives for miles and miles and Dad’s pissed off and his words are cutting. Later his voice becomes low and rough and he tells Dean words Dad thinks are overdue, sheds tears Dean had already seen once.

They arrive late but Sam’s back is straight and his eyes are wet. The child’s name isn’t Mary or Jess but Dad touches her tiny hands and his mouth moves silently.

 

 _God’s Law_

Lloyd’s Bar is still a decrepit place at a crossroad. Dean drinks shot after shot of burning liquid; he’s never drunk. He can’t hear the growl of the hellhounds outside, nor the scrape of their nails against the wood, their barely audible steps on the sandy road. He fucks the waitress in the bathroom and her moans drown away the voice of his father and the smile of his brother.

At the darkest hour he goes outside. He was expecting to see it wearing the same pretty face of ten years ago, but this time it’s chosen the weathered face of an old man. It never talks and Dean doesn’t either.

 

 _So we'll just set things straight, put things in their natural order. And you get ten extra years on top. That's a bonus._

 

***

It goes to him when days, months, years have passed. He’d been handsome once, but not anymore. It rejoices in the happiness his suffering brings it, the victory he willingly laid at its feet. In his eyes it can still see a trace of defiance and it knows that if he could scream he would shout that he would do it again.

But it is a demon and it’s true to its nature. It’s lied to him and his pretty pain is only a small part of the plan. One day -- month, year, who knows? -- something once called Dean Winchester will rip away some child’s mom in flames and blood.

\--


End file.
